Excerpt from French Electoral Systems and Elections Since 1789Mr. Peter Campbell has written a detailed study of French electoral systems. He is an impartial student who has been sparing in comment and interpretation. The later chapters in which he gives a very thorough account of the changes in French electoral systems are severely factual and historical. But his text enables us to Judge the value of the different voting systems that can make or mar democratic government.In order to understand the most important changes in French electoral systems one must insist very strongly on the various constitutional experiments which France underwent between the years 1789 and 1848. The election of the States General in 1789 was largely based on the system in force in the year 1614, which was the last occasion on which the States General had been summoned. The most important new provision was that of the strength of the three estates.

The clergy and the nobility were to have 300 deputies each and the Third Estate 600. It was the only free election that France had up till the revolution of 1848: the government applied no pressure and Sponsored no candidates. I have always felt that if only the Government had insisted that the Assembly should consist of two houses, the one embracing both the nobles and the clergy and the other the third estate, the result of the French Revolution might have been very different. The two houses would have acted as a check upon one another, and this, as Montesquieu had pointed out in his famous Esprit a'es Lois, was the principal merit of the British constitution which he had studied minutely.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work.

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